“I am sure you will place it to any thing rather
than want of kindness, that I have been so long silent—so very long, indeed,
that I am not quite sure whether the fault is on my side or yours—but, be it
what it may, it can never, I am sure, be laid to forgetfulness in either. This
comes to train you on to the merciful reception of a Tale of the Civil Wars: not political, however,
but

merely a
pseudo-romance of pseudo-chivalry. I have converted a lusty buccanier into a
hero with some effect; but the worst of all my undertakings is, that my rogue
always, in despite of me, turns out my hero. I know not how this should be—I am
myself, as Hamlet says, ‘indifferent
honest;’ and my father, though an attorney (as you will call him), was
one of the most honest men, as well as gentlemanlike, that ever breathed. I am
sure I can bear witness to that—for if he had at all smacked, or grown to, like
the son of Lancelot Gobbo, he might have
left us all as rich as Crœsus, besides
having the pleasure of taking a fine primrose path himself, instead of
squeezing himself through a tight gate and up a steep ascent, and leaving us
the decent competence of an honest man’s children. As to our more ancient
pedigree, I should be loath to vouch for them. My grandfather was a
horse-jockey and cattle-dealer, and made a fortune; my great-grandfather, a
Jacobite and traitor (as the times called him), and lost one; and after him
intervened one or two half-starved lairds, who rode a lean horse, and were
followed by leaner greyhounds; gathered with difficulty a hundred pounds from a
hundred tenants; fought duels; cocked their hats, and called themselves
gentlemen. Then we come to the old Border times, cattle-driving, halters, and
so forth, for which, in the matter of honesty, very little I suppose can be
said—at least in modern acceptation of the word. Upon the whole, I am inclined
to think it is owing to the earlier part of this inauspicious generation that I
uniformly find myself in the same scrape in my fables, and that, in spite of
the most obstinate determination to the contrary, the greatest rogue in my
canvass always stands out as the most conspicuous and prominent figure. All
this will be a riddle to you, unless you have received a certain packet, which
the Ballantynes were to have sent

“And now let me gratulate you upon the renovated
vigour of your fine old friends the Russians. By the Lord, sir! it is most
famous this campaign of theirs. I was not one of the very sanguine persons who
anticipated the actual capture of Buonaparte—a hope which rather proceeded from the ignorance of
those who cannot conceive that military movements, upon a large scale, admit of
such a force being accumulated upon any particular point as may, by abandonment
of other considerations, always ensure the escape of an individual. But I had
no hope, in my time, of seeing the dry bones of the Continent so warm with life
again, as this revivification of the Russians proves them to be. I look
anxiously for the effect of these great events on Prussia, and even upon
Saxony; for I think Boney will hardly trust himself again
in Germany, now that he has been plainly shown, both in Spain and Russia, that
protracted stubborn unaccommodating resistance will foil those grand exertions
in the long run. All laud be to Lord
Wellington, who first taught that great lesson.

“Charlotte is
with me just now at this little scrub habitation, where we weary ourselves all
day in looking at our projected improvements, and then slumber over the fire, I
pretending to read, and she to work trout-nets, or cabbage-nets, or some such
article. What is Canning about? Is there
any chance of our getting him in? Surely Ministers cannot hope to do without
him. Believe me dear Ellis, ever truly
yours,

George Canning (1770-1827)
Tory statesman; he was foreign minister (1807-1809) and prime minister (1827); a
supporter of Greek independence and Catholic emancipation.

John Wilson Croker (1780-1857)
Secretary of the Admiralty (1810) and writer for the Quarterly
Review; he edited an elaborate edition of Boswell's Life of
Johnson (1831).

George Ellis (1753-1815)
English antiquary and critic, editor of Specimens of Early English
Poets (1790), friend of Walter Scott.

Sir Francis Freeling, first baronet (1764-1836)
Postal reformer and member of the Roxburghe Club; he was secretary to the General Post
Office. He was a friend of William Jerdan and Sir Walter Scott.

Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821)
Military leader, First Consul (1799), and Emperor of the French (1804), after his
abdication he was exiled to Elba (1814); after his defeat at Waterloo he was exiled to St.
Helena (1815).